Local Company Make Good In The Den!

Bosses at a security firm who scooped £100,000 of investment on Dragon’s Den have turned down the deal saying they did not go on the show to ‘make money’.

Peter Harrison and Wesley Downham of FGH Security won over the famously hard-to-please entrepreneurs on the BBC2 business programme.

However, less than three months after exiting the Den, the security bosses came to a ‘mutual decision’ with the Dragons not to proceed with the deal. Dragons Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones, who were each offered a 20 per cent stake in FGH in return for the investment, wanted to expand the company nationally.

But the entrepreneurs told the Dragons they wanted to focus their efforts in the North West and didn’t want to go ‘too big too quick’.

Peter, managing director of FGH Security, said: “We had a few meetings with the Dragons and we talked about ways it could go but we had a difference of opinion.

“They wanted to take the company national but we wanted to focus on the North West, which is where we are from and have our roots.

“We are not greedy people. We were not on there to make money.

“We are more than happy running the business our way. We are both North West born and bred and we are happy to keep it that way.

“They are business people and they don’t get involved in a business unless they are going to make a profit.

“We didn’t want to go too big too quick.”

The company, based on Cannon Street, Accrington, started in 2003 providing door supervision at Lancaster University and has grown to service over 2,000 clients including the NHS, Revolution bars and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service.

Peter added: “It was a mutual decision and I don’t think anyone lost out.

“All in all we are happy with the outcome. They are exceptionally friendly and natural people like the rest of us.”

The entrepreneurs became one of only a handful of companies in all nine series of the programme to be offered a full investment by all five of the Dragons.

“It’s good to see a local business do well in the den” says Greengates Builders Merchants Accrington, Lancashire